ExxonMobil Corp’s (XOM) technological leadership has resulted in the world’s longest extended-reach well at the Santa Ynez unit, offshore southern California. The company recently completed this well by using Fast Drill technology. This well has been drilled from an existing offshore fixed platform drilling rig and extends more than six miles horizontally and more than 7,000 feet below sea level.
Located in the federal waters, the Santa Ynez unit includes the Hondo, Harmony and Heritage platforms. This drilling technique has been used to unlock the resource potential of the newest well as well as to access previously unreachable resources without installing an additional structure.
This is not the first time Exxon has used this technology. In early 2008, the company had used it at the Sakhalin-1 oil project in eastern Russia. At that time, it used the world’s most powerful land-based rig to drill from land to a target area in the oil reservoir located under the ocean about 11 kilometers from shore.
ExxonMobil has very large and established exploration and production (E&P) operations in all the major hydrocarbon producing regions of the world. It uses leading-edge technology to get the best results from the E&P activity. Despite all these, total production was only slightly positive in 2009, up 0.3%. Our long-term recommendation for ExxonMobil is Neutral, which means that the stock will perform in line with the broader market.
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